


To Be Yesterday's Tomorrow

by soulsinsolarem



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, I Don't Even Know, My First Fanfic, Not Canon Compliant, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:55:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8737414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulsinsolarem/pseuds/soulsinsolarem
Summary: The enemy has won and Sakura, Sai, and Kiba are desperate - desperate enough to time travel... they might die (read probably) but Konoha will not fall. Not again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfic so please let me know if you like it and what you didn't like or thought could be improved. I really want this to succeed and for my writing to become stronger. Thank you for reading!

They made for an unlikely group - Sakura, Kiba, and Sai, but they were all that was left, the only ones who still clung to the old beliefs. The rest of the Konoha Thirteen were gone: either having defected or dead and the group couldn’t find it in themselves to care. Once maybe, but that time was long gone.

Before though, before Naruto and Sasuke had died by each other’s hand and Tsunade had still been alive and Hokage, they could have - would have cared. But that capacity had withered when Naruto’s Ransengan had gotten Sasuke square in the heart and Sasuke’s Chidori had imploded Naruto’s head. The dark haired male of Team Seven had been twisted, manipulated by Madara and he had truly been aiming to kill. Naruto had not.

But it had been expected, the last remaining member of the original Team Kakashi theorized, Kakashi having died months ago from battling an army of Zetsu clones. They had been too bright, too naive and yes, Sakura dared to use that word in conjunction with Sasuke. For what did he know, she wondered carelessly, not bothering to brush away the drop of rain on her cheek. He had never killed, never felt life bleed away beneath his hands. Itatchi didn’t count, she decided, nor did Orochimaru. The former had been trying to get Sasuke to kill him and had failed and Orochimaru hadn’t been killed, simply absorbed.

But even that couldn’t take the sting off her grief and she looks up at the sky crying big fat tears, the tears that she could not, and wordlessly turns away.

It had wilted further when Ino was dead with a smile in her throat from a careless, careless mistake and Kiba could only stare blankly, his body going through the motions as he mechanically slaughtered his enemies and gathered Ino up into his arms, leaping back towards the village.

After Ino’s death, all ninja were given a tattoo on the inner thigh which was programmed to self-destruct the moment the last of their chakra fled their body - the chakra that was needed for survival. He watches a chunnin tattoo the seal onto Academy students, little five year olds who take the stinging pain without tears and with solemn, drawn faces. He watches the children line up, one after the other, like lambs to the slaughter and unknowingly comes to the same conclusion Sakura had in regards to Ino; she had been too bright.

Sai had known - he had always known; that was what being in Root, or Ne as some called it, had been all about but… Naruto had been his friend and he hadn’t cared at all for Sasuke, but he did care for Sakura and it broke him to see her go blank and cold. Then he had gotten close to Kiba and that hurt had compounded twofold. He reasoned, naturally, that that was the life of a ninja and it was best that this happen under his guidance than not at all. Because he would rather have them emotionless than dead but nonetheless, watching them die inside, bit by bit, day by day, as news of more deaths came flooding in over the months _hurt_.

So, no, they didn’t really care. All that they could care about was surviving and living the best they could in this war-torn world. After all, there wasn’t much else they could do. The years crept on past, 20212223 - Sai was 25 then, and so was Sakura but Kiba was still 24, when they got The Idea. They had been drunk then - the alcohol helping to drown out the screams - and Sakura joked later on that she thought that they had to have been in a constant state of inebriation to have actually considered and gone through with it.

But they had and secretly Sai and Kiba considered it a miracle, a heaven-sent miracle that it had worked at all. Of course, they would have liked it if someone else could have gone in their stead, someone more suited to the task, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and they would just have to make do.

The trio did admit that it would have been nice to have Shikamaru’s brains on their side but Shikamaru was gone, having died when trying to stop Neji from defecting. The older male had followed Tenten who had turned traitor during the second year of the war.

Konoha had never given her any kind of recognition, she had claimed. She was a weapons mistress, in any other village she would have been practically worshipped, and the sad thing was Sakura couldn’t think of anything to prove her wrong. So the other girl had slipped away to join the Akatsuki and the other ninja villages that made up Tobi’s army and Sakura quietly chalked the brown haired girl up as another personal failure.

Neji had lasted three months before he put his plan in motion. Overall, it had been ridiculously simplistic. All it had taken was Neji rigging the room that the Main branch would be meeting in and, once everyone was there, even the children, gassing them all. From there, he had pulled an Itachi and slit all of their throats, in order to make sure they couldn’t utilize the Cursed Bird seal, before defecting. He had left Hinata alive though, partly because she had been out on a mission and that date had been the only time where it would have definitely captured all of the Main Branch members and partly, Hinata liked to think, because she was the only cousin that he had liked.

Their betrayal had been a blow to the Konoha forces and while not huge, had definitely left a dent. It wasn’t just the fact that both Neji and Tenten were enormously talented and skilled and that they had cost the Konoha forces Shikamaru, one of their best tacticians; it was the fact that they had gotten people thinking about why they were fighting for Konoha. Tsunade had had to do some major damage control on that and the resulting mess had been dubbed the Diplomatic Incident, never to be spoken of again.

Less important in the scheme of things was the overall uprising that was initiated by the Hyuuga Branch House against Hinata. The blue-haired girl had been forced to flee instead of utilizing the Caged Bird seal. The girl had been about too - her father having drilled the Hyuuga mentality into her for years when she was younger coupled with the war had changed Hinata into someone barely recognizable to the shy child she had been.

Shino would also have been nice, not only in the construction and implementation of The Plan but in the aftermath too, but that was also of no use. Because, Shino was also dead, his seal having activated after he committed suicide when trapped in the Akatsuki headquarters. Not only did he self-detonate but so did his kikai bugs - the seal having been modified for Auberames - and the Headquarters had gone up in flames, in an explosion that would have made the late Akatsuki no Deidara cry from jealousy.

But even without Shino’s intellect and Shikamaru’s input they were fine. Sakura hadn’t been able to continue being the Fifth Hokage’s apprentice for over three years by relying on the Godaime’s fondness for her after all, and Kiba may have slacked off in the Academy but he hadn’t been able to shoot from Genin to ANBU in the two years that Naruto was gone with Jiraiya by riding on his clans coat-tails. And Sai had been in Root since seven which should say it all.

So the unlikely trio continued on with The Plan, bouncing from one safe house to another and working on it when they had time. Hinata had tried to help but she was no Yondaime or Naruto Uzumaki and her attempts at helping more often than not ended with her working on her original jutsu two chairs up while the three of them huddled around the papers messily strewn on the table. Make no mistake, Hinata was smart and deadly but sealing was not her forte.

Yet, it was seals that had saved her from certain death a few months after Hinata had declared her burning hatred for the “swirls on paper,” as she had dubbed them, when she had grown frustrated by their lack of progress. The young woman had grinned up at Sakura and patted the seal fondly and breathlessly conceded that seals were okay. Unfortunately that hadn’t extended to a second time.

It had been a standard mission and she had gone her merry way while Kurenai went with Lee to take out Kumo and Sai and Kiba went to destroy Kiri. Sakura and Gai had stayed behind to guard the base as there was no one else who could do so. There was also the fact that if the various teams didn’t make it back Sakura could be sent back in time by Gai. Of course, it hadn’t been fine-tuned yet - they couldn’t control when they would arrive but it worked in theory. If someone else had been there as well, they thought that maybe the person travelling could have decided when they would land. Asuma would have been the best choice with his wind natured chakra and experience but he was dead, killed by Hidan before everything went pear shaped and the Allied Forces betrayed Konoha.

Gaara had done the best he could - he had been the only one who had stood by Konoha when the others had declared war but he had relied so much - too much on Shukaku when he was younger. The Godaime Kazekage had fought long and hard with his siblings before they were all wiped out in one fell swoop. They had stood no chance but they had given the majority of Suna time to evacuate. When the Konoha forces, sent on the order of Tsunade, had crested the dunes they had been met with worried, terrified civilians and the tower of the Kazekage collapsing as plumes of smoke rose from the buildings. They had known then, that they had arrived too late and that was one thing Sakura felt that Naruto had never forgiven himself for.

Nearly the same devastation had happened with Cell BFF - Brutal Force & Finesse; Hinata and Chouji’s team. They had been an odd matchup but they worked and despite a few protests from Kiba - namely that Hinata had been on his team, they continued to work. They had gotten into the Iwagakure headquarters, on their destruction mission and been spotted by Neji. The next instant, they had been swamped with waves upon waves of shinobi aiming to kill.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the two of them lasted a fair while, with Hinata’s impenetrable defense that she had created. But that defense required a great deal of chakra and even with Chouji lending her some, they were in trouble. Normally they could have fallen back on the seal that they had prepared to be summoned back to the hideout but Kabuto had jammed it. It had been a marvelous invention, the Seal Jammer, created by a Kiri Chunin. The only good thing that came of the duo's deaths was that they had managed to steal the Seal Jammer and send it back to the base before succumbing. In her last breaths, Hinata formed the release seal for the Caged Bird and whispered Kai. Neji died an agonizing but swift death that day.

Kurenai had been furious and Kiba still shuddered to remember it. In all his time that she had been his sensei he had never seen her so mad. Unlike Chouji however, they hadn’t managed to restrain her in time and she went on a suicide rampage over the loss of her daughter, cumulating in the deaths of over a thousand Sound shinobi and around 500 Zetsu clones before being struck down by Kabuto himself.

Gai had started shouting about the power of YOUTH then, disregarding the fact that Kurenai had been his age and it had taken both Shizune and Sakura’s combined efforts to make him quit it - the former asking him to stop and the latter knocking him out to get him to stop. The older medic had been with the group since Tsunade’s death at the very beginning. The Godaime Hokage had bargained her life for the safety of the city that she reigned over. Shizune had watched her go and the very next day had watched Danzo throw the gates of Konoha wide open. That night, she had shown up at Sakura’s door, silent tears seeping from her eyes, and quietly declared that she was with them. With her on their side, Sakura had been able to concentrate more on the chakra strings that had made Akasuna no Sasori such a deadly opponent. She wanted to learn both from sheer curiosity and also from necessity. With her ability to control chakra strings they were able to partake in more delicate operations.

But still, it wasn’t really enough and they had stalled for as long as they could already. So, they retreated to their base, knowing it was only a matter of time before they were sought and found by the enemy and made their final stand. Lee stood guard outside the door to hold back any intruders and Gai and Shizune began channeling chakra. Gai provided the brute force by taking chakra from his salamander contract and then from his own reserves and Shizune took the chakra flooding through her from Gai and refined it into the circle of seals. It hurt Shizune, so much _it hurt_ , but there was nothing for it. It had to be done.

Gai succumbed first, crumpling dead to the floor and Shizune followed soon after. He had burned out his reserves and the necessary chakra to live and Shizune’s insides had liquefied with the force and power of the foreign chakra flowing through her. But it wasn’t enough. THey wouldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for Lee’s sacrifice of throwing all eight gates open at once.

Four bodies hit the ground, joining the two already there and the explosive tags plastered all over the room sensed the absence of all chakra and they fulfilled their purpose.

Thus, there was nobody there to see the explosion at once was an old power station.

There was nobody there to witness the fall of the Resistance and of six brave shinobi.

Finally, and most importantly, there was nobody there to see the sky crack.


End file.
